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Then the question rises whether Matter- potentially what it
becomes by receiving shape- is actually something else or whether
it has no actuality at all. In general terms: When a potentiality
has taken a definite form, does it retain its being? Is the
potentiality, itself, in actualization? The alternative is that,
when we speak of the "Actual Statue" and of the "Potential
Statue," the Actuality is not predicated of the same subject as
the "Potentiality." If we have really two different subjects,
then the potential does not really become the actual: all that
happens is that an actual entity takes the place of a potential.
The actualized entity is not the Matter [the Potentiality,
merely] but a combination, including the Form-Idea upon the
Matter.
This is certainly the case when a quite different thing results
from the actualization-statue, for example, the combination, is
distinctly different from the bronze, the base; where the
resultant is something quite new, the Potentiality has clearly
not, itself, become what is now actualized. But take the case
where a person with a capacity for education becomes in fact
educated: is not potentiality, here, identical with
actualization? Is not the potentially wise Socrates the same man
as the Socrates actually wise?
But is an ignorant man a being of knowledge because he is so
potentially? Is he, in virtue of his non-essential ignorance,
potentially an instructed being?
It is not because of his accidental ignorance that he is a being
of Knowledge: it is because, ignorant though he be by accident,
his mind, apt to knowledge, is the potentiality through which he
may become so. Thus, in the case of the potentially instructed
who have become so in fact, the potentiality is taken up into the
actual; or, if we prefer to put it so, there is on the one side
the potentiality while, on the other, there is the power in
actual possession of the form.
If, then, the Potentiality is the Substratum while the thing in
actualization- the Statue for example a combination, how are we
to describe the form that has entered the bronze?
There will be nothing unsound in describing this shape, this Form
which has brought the entity from potentiality to actuality, as
the actualization; but of course as the actualization of the
definite particular entity, not as Actuality the abstract: we
must not confuse it with the other actualization, strictly so
called, that which is contrasted with the power producing
actualization. The potential is led out into realization by
something other than itself; power accomplishes, of itself, what
is within its scope, but by virtue of Actuality [the abstract]:
the relation is that existing between a temperament and its
expression in act, between courage and courageous conduct. So far
so good:
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